Next City Sounds: Interfaces | Various Artists
Gruen 192 | Audio CD [order]
Reviews
As part of the 20th KAMUNA (Karlsruhe Museum Night), so-called ›in-situ perfor- mances‹ took place at three locations in Karlsruhe on August 4, 2018:
The project room ßpace, the artist-run space Halo ARS and the pedestrian zone Kaiserstraße were connected to the ZKM via an outgoing audio data stream.
At ßpace, sound artist Lasse-Marc Riek condensed naturalistic field recordings, noise and soundscape recordings into a sonic live collage.
The live electronic duo Lintu + Røyk per- formed with modular synthesizers and broadcasted live electronica from Halo ARS in Karlsruhe’s Oststadt.
The members of KITeratur presented their participative performance ›SYNONiMUS‹ in the pedestrian zone in the Kaiserstraße, while the No Input Ensemble performed in the subspace under ZKM’s blue Cube. At ZKM, all incoming signals were fanned out in a kaleidoscopic manner and pro- cessed artistically in a multi-room sound installation by Yannick Hofmann, Marco Kempf, Benjamin Miller, Barbara Nerness, Sebastian Schottke and Dan Wilcox in the Cube, in the Cube vestibule and in the underground car park at ZKM.
This audio recording was made in the ZKM Cube, where the KAMUNA visitors could determine the sound mixing of the audio data streams via an interactive interface specially developed for this project and experiment with the sound material using a battery of interconnected sound aliena- tors and effect pedals.
Riek’s naturalistic soundscape recordings and field recordings, Lintus + Røyk’s syn- thesized electronic sounds, the voices of the participative speech performance of the university group KITeratur as well as the ethereal sound and feedback noises choreographed by the No Input Ensemble condense proportionally into this 60-minute experimental audio piece, whose tonal quality ultimately oscillates between Ambient, Drone and Musique concrète.
›Next City Sounds: Interfaces‹ took place as part of the EU project ›Interfaces‹ (EU funding programme ›Creative Europe‹) on the occasion of the Karlsruhe Museum Night 2018.
Excerpt:
01 Track (62′12″)
CD (500 copies)
Credit:
Production: ZKM | Hertz-Lab
Concept & artistic direction: Yannick Hofmann
Mix & Mastering: Sebastian Schottke
Software development: Dan Wilcox
Multi-room sound installation at the ZKM: Marco Kempf (Cube balcony), Benjamin Miller & Barbara Nerness (underground car park at ZKM), Sebastian Schottke & Dan Wilcox (ZKM Cube)
In-situ performances in Karlsruhe: KITeratur (Kaiserstraße, Musikhaus Schlaile), Lasse-Marc Riek (ßpace), Lintu + Røyk (Halo ARS), No Input Ensemble (subspace ZKM)
Sound engineering: Christian Berkes, Daniel Höpfner, David Luchow, Marcel Mendel
Graphic design: Eric Jentzsch | dkm-graphik.de
Sound Art Series by Gruenrekorder
Germany / 2020 / Gruen 192 / LC 09488 / GEMA / EAN 194491017170
Ed Pinsent | The Sound Projector
[…] Both Teredo Navalis and Ring Road Ring are examples of a single artist’s investigation of a very specific location, using sound art. By contrast, the record Next City Sounds: Interfaces (GRUEN 192) is a highly collaborative effort, involving multiple creators in its realisation, and was also a very interactive event, allowing the audience to participate in its making to some extent. I think it’s a document of what transpired on one day in Karlsruhe in August 2018, as part of a larger cultural event called KAMUNA, the Karlsruher Museumsnacht. It involved three locations in the city, one of which was the pedestrianised Kaiserstrasse; the creators involved were Lasse-Marc Riek; the electronics duo Linto + Røyk; the performance art group KITeratur; and the group No Input Ensemble.
Though separated in space, all of these people were generating sounds and contributing to the general audio data-stream – Lasse-Marc did it with field recordings to make a “live collage”, Linto + Røyk performed live electronica and modular synth music, No Input Ensemble did their act live in part of the ZKM arts lab, and so on. KITeratur win the prize for having the courage to do their thing in public – their work involves engaging unsuspecting passers-by in a participative performance. The fun doesn’t stop there, as it seems that all these sound events were being channelled into the ZKM arts space and subjected to further processing by six sound artists, then played back over speakers – thus creating instant sound installations in many locations all over the arts-lab space, including the underground car park! And just to recap, there was audience participation too – visitors to the ZKM Cube could get their hands on a specially designed interface and play around with all of these audio signals, using pedals and switches.
One has to admire the lengths that the organisers have gone to, for what sounds like it would be an absolute nightmare to co-ordinate, and I do appreciate it’s probably intended to open up the possibilities of what sound-installation can mean to an audience, extending its reach with new technologies. However, I found it a tedious listen, a jumble of conflicting signals, full of somnolent and unexciting sounds, and lacking any sense of focus or direction. There are far too many contributors, and this sprawling diffuse presentation does no favours to any of them, failing to provide a useful platform where they might shine. It’s impossible to single out any one vision or intention in this turgid swirling morass, regardless of how many “Artists Statements” are printed in the booklet. I can’t discern any content or meaning, and the record doesn’t seem to be about anything much at all, except the technology that made it possible to join up this many sound events in one place. While Enrico Coniglio and Michael Lightborne have successfully engaged with their specific locations and wish to communicate something about them, this process-heavy record fails to do so on a massive scale; it has no sense of location whatsoever, and nothing to say. […]
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Aurelio Cianciotta | Neural
During the 20th edition of Kamuna on August 4th 2018, a habitual music event in the Karlsruhe Museum, three different in-situ performances took place. The locations were the project room ßpace, the space Halo ARS and the pedestrian area Kaiserstraße, connected to the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM), The first space was given to the sound-artist Lasse-Marc Riek, who in real time presented some quite naturalistic field recordings, mixed with some recorded sounds, in a hyper-vivid combination. The other room, directly run by the artists, in the east area of Karlshrue, was employed for the live performance by Lintu + Røyk. Their set was made with modular synths and they presented a quite raw and experimental kind of electronic music. In the pedestrian area of Kaiserstraße, KITerature gave life to a participative performance called “SYNONiMUS”, while the No Imput Ensemble was in the basement of ZKM under the blue cube. All these sonic inputs were directed to the ZKM, and then re-processed and reused in a sound installation by Yannick Hofmann, Marco Kempf, Ben Miller, Sebastian Schottke and Dan Wilcox. Within the experimental field, the idea is not new, if we think of the anticipations of the Italian theatre post-avantgarde at the end of seventies, the theories on the “Città del Teatro” (City of Theatre) and the FM radio broadcasts of the performances made at several Roman locations and artistic spaces, later promoted at Beat 72. The city is a big stage, especially in the case of the sounds, which are not simply what we listen to on the street, but also consist of their imaginative sets, the ways of the artists who live in that city. The whole complexity of this project is presented in the form of an audio CD, produced by Gruenrekorder, whose release was also supported by the EU funding program, Creative Europe. A single track of 60 minutes can be difficult for most listeners. However, for an accustomed audience, this is the right choice to introduce such a variety of experiences and genres. The work shows the many sides of the experiences involved and their deep aptitude of recombination.
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Wolfgang Fuchs | freiStil – Magazin für Musik und Umgebung / #92
Spannungsfeldaufnahmen / Neues von Gruenrekorder
Hier handelt es sich ja nicht um die ersten Auseinandersetzungen mit Tonträgerinnen aus dem Hause gruenrekorder. Dennoch seien an dieser Stelle ein paar grundlegende Ideen erlaubt. Alleine der Labelname eröffnet schon eine ganze Fülle an Gedanken- und Sinneswelten. Das “gruen” könnte einen Aspekt von Ambient im Sinne einer Alltagsklangkulisse suggerieren, eine gewisse Sanft- und Entspanntheit im Umgang mit Aufnahmetechniken, eine Idealvorsellung von Natur als Ausgangspunkt und mittlerweile krassem Kontrast zu unserer hochent- und verwickelten Welt etc. In direkter Verbindung mit dem “rekorder” schummeln sich dann des weiteren ein paar Konzepte auf die imaginäre Lichtung, von wegen grüner, nachhaltiger oder sogar “neutraler” Fixierung von Klängen. Hier, am Übergang, am Grat zwischen Objektivierung und Subjektivierung von Schallereignissen agiert gruenrekorder. Im Spannungsfeld zwischen unbekümmertem Hinhören und avanciertem Selektieren, Verwerfen, Überlagern, Umschichten und schließlich Fixieren haben es sich zahlreiche AkteurInnen bequem und unbequem gemacht. Dementsprechend vielfältig gestaltet sich auch der Katalog von gruenrekorder. Von beinahe rohen Feldaufnahmen im Grätzl nebenan, bei deren Wiedergabe auf dem eigenen Heimsystem bei offenem Fenster die eine oder andere Fehllokalisierung von Sounds eintreten kann, bis hin zu komplexen sonoren Verzahnungen und Umerzählungen.
Enrico Coniglio veröffentlicht mit teredo navalis eine akustische Projektion der Lagune von Venedig auf CD-Format. Basierend auf field recordings aus dieser Region kreierte dieser Klangkünstler mehr als lediglich “sonic postcards”, sondern einen Zwischenbericht von Forschungsaktivitäten in diesem fragilen Ökosystem zwischen “unberührter” Natur und den durch Menschen verursachten Dauerstörungen. Verschiedenste Mikrofonierungen über und unter Wasser ermöglichen dieses Eintauchen in einen facettenreichen Klangkosmos.
Next City Sounds: Interfaces wiederum ist als Momentaufnahme eines Events in und um das ZKM Karlsruhe entstanden. Die auf der vorliegenden CD kondensierten Klänge speisen sich aus field recordings (Lasse-Marc Riek), Synthesizer/Elektronik (Lintu + Røyks), ätherischen Rauschflächen und Feedback (No Input Ensemble) und den Stimmen einer partizipativen Sprechperformance der Gruppe KITeratur. Das dabei entstandene experimentelle Hörstück bewegt sich im offenen Feld zwischen Ambient (auch unter dem Aspekt Drone), Musique Concrète und anderen Ausprägungen zeitgemäßer und gehobener Klangkunst.
Einen Schritt weiter in Richtung einer Entschleunigung und Ausdünnung des am Ohr angelegten Informationsschwalls geht un|sounding the self – a portrait. Dieses auf DVD gebannte audiovisuelle Portrait der beiden US-amerikanischen Künstler Christopher Shultis & Craig Shepard ist eine intensive Auseinandersetzung mit der Triade composing-performing-listening und vor allem mit deren wechselseitigen Beziehungen, Abhängigkeiten und Alleinstellungsmerkmalen. Nicht von ungefähr kommt die Pionierarbeit von John Cage ins Spiel, hat jener viel zitierte und bemühte Universalkünstler doch mit wesentlichen Fragen zu unserer (menschlichen) Rolle in einem alle Sinne umfassenden Kosmos unzählige Diskurse angestoßen. Eine erfreuliche Auflösung vieler Problemstellungen und Anhandlungen ist aber auch in diesem Fall die Einsicht, dass keine Hörefahrung mit einer anderen ident sein kann. Niemand kann beispielsweise seine/ihre akustischen Eindrücke eines Spaziergangs durch einen Park in der individuell erlebten Breite und Tiefe einer anderen Person zur Gänze nachvollziehbar vermitteln. Die eigenen Trittgeräusche, als eine Soundspur von vielen, bleiben immer die eigenen, die sonst niemand reproduzieren kann. Was schon passieren kann, ist das Versinken in einem einstündigen audiovisuellen Machwerk (Regie: Christoph Collenberg) als eine von vielen Möglichkeiten, sich dem Phänomen der Kontemplation und deren Wirkmacht aus einer weiteren Perspektive nähern zu können. “There’s no one left to tell you what to do. Just watch this film but if it tries to give you advice, ignore it. After the end get up and listen around, see if the world sounds any different. No time with silence is wasted time. (…)”
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textura
All three of these recent Gruenrekorder releases are quintessential label products: adventurous, thought-provoking, and unusual. Michael Lightborne’s and Enrico Coniglio’s are grounded in field recordings, Coventry Ring Road and the Venetian Lagoon the sites used for their respective projects; an entirely different animal, un|sounding the self — a portrait combines an hour-long video and booklet for its in-depth portrait of American artists Christopher Shultis and Craig Shepard. […]
Both components of un|sounding the self — a portrait are required for a proper appreciation of this ambitious creation. Reading the booklet, a 116-page ‘Field Manual‘ featuring texts by the artists, the director Christoph Collenberg, and the collection’s editor Bernd Herzogenrath, without the film makes for an incomplete experience; watching the hour-long DVD without the clarifying details provided by the booklet is just as incomplete. (In Collenberg’s words, un|sounding the self — a portrait is an “experimental, audiovisual double portrait that borrows from a documentary approach.”)
However different Christopher Shultis, percussionist and Professor Emeritus of the University of New Mexico, and Craig Shepard, trombonist and Wandelweiser collective member, are in their artistic expression, their interests converge in two key areas: their lives, philosophies, and creative approach have been profoundly influenced by Henry David Thoreau, specifically his thoughts about walking and natural sound, and the art and writings of John Cage. Triggered by keywords provided by the filmmaker, Shultis and Shepard ruminate during the film on a broad range of topics, among them dreams, silence, sacred places, compositional practice, stage fright, and Cage’s 4’33” (described by Shultis as a “a good example of communal silence”).
Memorable statements emerge during the hour-long presentation, which alternates between images of nature and the city, the artists pontificating, and performance footage filmed in Olomouc, a city in the Czech Republic the artists visited for a week at Herzogenrath’s invitation on the occasion of his annual course ‚Theory into Practice.‘ Shultis says at one point, “Practicing is a dangerous word for a musician because it too often is about habit and not enough about exploration,” words that will resonate with any musician learning an instrument. His remembering of a line by Cage that “the problem with 4’33” is that it has a beginning, middle, and end” likewise resonates meaningfully.
One way in which the two differ is in their position on silent walks, Shultis preferring to be alone on his and Shepard a proponent of both solitary and communal walks; while the one he led in Olomouc, his eighteenth silent walk, involved thirty-four participants, others have been undertaken alone, including a 250-mile trek across Switzerland completed in thirty-one days in 2005. Both artists promote the salutary effects of multi-hour walks, less for the physical benefits and more the heightening of the senses and boosts to creativity.
A particularly gripping part of the film is the one showing Shultis doing a solo performance at the Kaple Božího Tela, the footage mesmerizing in showing him coaxing sounds from wind chimes, rattles, tree branches, lettuce, and a small cactus, with most of the objects laid out on a small table. The combination of deep engagement by Shultis, the chapel setting, and the attentive audience makes for a particularly engrossing sequence (the pieces performed are Cage’s 1975 work Child of Tree and Shultis’s own 1989 homage to it, 64 Statements re and not re Child of Tree). A work by Shepard also appears within the film, his trumpet performance of Dornach, den 2. August 2005 surfacing intermittently.
In his foreword, David Rothenberg astutely notes, “This film intertwines their ideas and walks with unparalleled elegance,” and suggests that after the film ends one should “get up and listen around [to] see if the world sounds any different.” Chances are it will and, further, will continue to long after one’s initial exposure to the project.
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Roger Batty | Musique Machine
Next City Sounds: Interfaces is a sixty-two-minute work that moves between music, sound art, and field recording. It’s certainly a shifting & drifting, at times fairly daring sonic experience which largely managers to keep ones attention held & focus, which is a fairly difficult feat for a work that blends & shifts through different genres of the sound.
The release appears on the German label Gruenrekorder- who put out stuff in the untouched field recordings, sound art & sounds aping genres- so really the perfect place for a release like Next City Sounds: Interfaces. It comes in the form of a CD- which presented in an oversized A5 sized brown card folder- which takes in monochrome city map artwork & embossed lettering- with the whole thing been topped off with a 16 page A5 detailing the idea behind the project, and the artists involved- so another very nicely presented & distinctive bit of packing from the folks over at Gruenrekorder.
The single fifty eight-minute track was created as part of the 20th KAMUNA (Karlsruhe Museum Night), so-called ›in-situ perfor- mances‹ took place at three locations in the German city of Karlsruhe on August 4, 2018. In all twelve projects/ people where involved in the creation of the track- KITeratur, Lasse-Marc Riek, Lintu + Røyk, No Input Ensemble, ZKM| Hertz-Lab, Yannick Hofmann, Marco Kempf, Benjamin Miller, Barbara Nerness, Sabastian Schottke. Dan Wilcox, and interfaces-with the whole track been created as a morphing sound world.
The track opens with a blend of chattering & baying children voices, swirling electro sounds, and cut-up German talking. As we move on we shift into a mix of tolling & hovering ambience- that hovers with tone melted instrumental darts, bird twitters, & electro swoops. By around the twenty-minute mark, we’ve moved into a blend of crunching & baying electronics that are a drift with swooping & breathing textures. Towards the midway mark, we get more defined musical elements in the shape of wondering piano notation- though this is wrapped in a blend of warbling & eerie electro harmonics & germanic female chatter. The wonder piano pops in & out through the rest of the track- but it never really shapes into anything solid or firm in the structure. Though-out there is very much a feeling of drifting & ebbing sonic soup, with every so often more defined and firm elements appearing- be it a fleeting electro stab, darting beat texture, field recording strand, voice or sound texture.
I can certainly see Next City Sounds: Interfaces appealing to those who enjoy blurring & often hazed soundscaping- think a more random, experimental & Germanic voice edged take on some of Future Sounds Of London more swirling & abstract material, and you’ll get an idea of what we have here.
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Łukasz Komła | Nowamuzyka.pl
Eksperymentalna Noc Muzeów w Karlsruhe.
Przenosimy się do południowo-zachodnich Niemiec, do miasta Karlsruhe. Jest 4 sierpnia 2018 r. i przed nami Noc Muzeów. Tego dnia w trzech różnych częściach miasta – ale w jednym czasie – został zrealizowany spektakl dźwiękowy przez Lasse-Marca Rieka (artysta dźwiękowy, jeden z założycieli Gruenrekorder), elektroniczny duet Lintu + Røyk, KITeratur i No Input Ensemble.
Riek operował nagraniami terenowymi będąc w sali ßpace, Lintu + Røyk znajdując się w Halo ARS wypuścili elektroniczny strumień posługując się syntezatorami modularnymi, członkowie KITeratur zaprezentowali partycypacyjny performans SYNONiMUS w strefie dla pieszych przy Kaiserstraße, podczas gdy zespół No Input Ensemble wystąpił w przestrzeni tuż obok ZKM | Hertz-Lab. To miejsce jest bardzo ciekawym ośrodkiem, które można określić jako transdyscyplinarna platforma badawczo-społeczno-rozwojowa na styku sztuki mediów i nauki.
Mniej więcej w tamtym czasie powstał Hertz-Lab, który połączył Instytut Mediów Wizualnych oraz Instytut Muzyki i Akustyki. Artyści, badacze korzystają tam z nowoczesnych technik i urządzeń, sięgając na przykład po rozszerzoną rzeczywistość, sztuczną inteligencję czy immersyjność. Sama nazwa placówki jest dedykowana naukowcowi Heinrichowi Hertzowi, który udowodnił istnienie fal elektromagnetycznych w swoich słynnych eksperymentach z iskrami na Uniwersytecie w Karlsruhe w 1886 roku. Uważany jest także za twórcę technologii radiowej oraz bezprzewodowej transmisji danych.
Wracając do materiału z Next City Sounds: Interfaces należy wiedzieć, że wszystkie sygnały dźwiękowe spotkały się właśnie w Hertz-Labie, a następnie zostały rozesłane w kalejdoskopie i przetworzone w wielopokojowej instalacji dźwiękowej przez Yannicka Hofmanna, Marco Kempfa, Benjamina Millera, Barbarę Nerness, Sebastiana Schottke i Dana Wilcoxa. W ostatecznym miksie wykorzystano również interaktywny interfejs specjalnie opracowany dla tego projektu.
Next City Sounds: Interfaces to wciągający 60-minutowy eksperyment dźwiękowy z narracją krążącą wokół ambientu, dronów, musique concrète, szumów, sprzężeń zwrotnych i ludzkiej mowy.
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Frans de Waard | VITAL WEEKLY
The last one, for now, is a release that is a compilation but it is also one track. From what I understand this a recording of an event that took place on August 4, 2018, on three different locations in Karlsruhe; The project room ßpace, the artist-run space Halo ARS and the pedestrian zone Kaiserstraße. They were all connected to the ZKM, the big media art place in the same place. At ßpace, label boss Lasse-Marc Riek played field recordings, noises and soundscapes, at Halo ARS was the duoLintu + Røyk with modular synthesizers and on the street were members of KITeratur to which people participate (adding random spoken words) and the No Input Ensemble performed in the subspace under ZKM’s blue Cube (doesn’t make four locations? I copied it all from the press text. All of this mixed and processed as an installation by Yannick Hofmann, Marco Kempf, Benjamin Miller, Barbara Nerness, Sebastian Schottke and Dan Wilcox in the Cube and the underground car park at ZKM. I assume all in walking distance so you could move between the various performances and hear them individually or combined but invisible. The music is a sixty-two-minute endless stream of sounds and spoken word. The latter we don’t hear continuously, but now and then. Sometimes the music is quite ‚there‘, a bit noisy, which I guess is the thing with modular synthesizers, but who knows whatever noises were added by Riek? It is not bad but I am also not overly enthusiastic about it. It is, perhaps, that there isn’t much happening in terms of composition that I found missing here. It was a bit too much of a random fading in and out of the mix of sounds, the unconscious stream factor, I guess. It comes in a very fine package with quite some information, which is a nice extra feature.
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